Thanks for your (and the other guys posting as ACs) detailed answers.
So it's mostly a ratchet effect on the foreign exchange, with massive impact because of AUD/USD volatility.
It sucks that online platforms such as Steam are playing that game and not allow you to buy in USD at US prices... Well it also sucks for me to some extent (although online prices in Japan are not so bad - almost in sync with the US, the selection is limited, with AAA titles such as Arkham City missing for obscure reasons, etc). There used to be a time where I actually relied on Steam more, when they had not implemented regional segmentation yet. Now I am back to brick and mortar import shops or HK based outlets.
Why is it so expensive? Taxes?
Or just good old price fixing?
I am a European, now living in Japan, and have ordered a lot of stuff from the US over the years. While I can figure out most factors for explaining game prices in these 3 regions (the 1 USD = 1 GBP = 1 EUR "special exchange rate", VAT differences, margins lower in the US vs rest of the world aka price fixing), I still cannot make sense of the outrageous prices in Australia...
If I see these guys putting top investment bankers' heads on spikes or something, then I will take them seriously. With fear and respect. Otherwise, they are just whiny hippies.
Mod parent up. The perception of the US abroad is probably what is going to change the most at the moment he becomes president, even if it might not be so obvious as seen from inside the United States.
OK, so I give it a try for the first time since I switched back to non-free OS world (many, many years ago).
The good: it is about 1 million times faster and more polished than 1.x iterations.
The yummy: the perspective of writing macros in Python instead of craptacular VBA
The puzzling... and maybe the ugly: I have yet to find a way to set OOo locale to "system locale".
Microsoft did a pretty good job with the regional settings, allowing for a lot of customization. Very useful for people who juggle with around 4-5 languages on a daily basis (with accents, chinese characters, and other oddities) and like to have a very customized "common ground" locale. I like to be able to write my dates ANSI style, separate my 3 digit groups with spaces, count in meters, use $ as a currency symbol, and then some.
It is just natural that an office suite should inherit all those settings from the OS (or at least provide a setting to do so).
And so far, it appears that OOo does not have this basic functionality? The "default" option actually sets the application locale to the same used for localizing menus (i.e. if the application menus are in en_US, then the standard en_US locale - including units, date, number formats) will be used...
Looks like I am stuck with Excel for quite a while then.
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss